The List

Claude Clonsky's Untitled (supermarket) wallpaper

Fragment from an interview with Umberto Eco, We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die.

SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?

Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.

Umberto Eco chose to work on a theme described as “The Infinity of Lists" for an exhibition called Mille e tre, on view at the Louvre November 7, 2009- February 8, 2010

The exhibition Mille e tre traces the evolution of the concept of a list through history and examines how its meaning changes with the passage of time: from its ancient use in funerary traditions to its present-day use in everyday life, via the creative processes of contemporary artists, the list is a vehicle for cultural codes and the bearer of different messages.